Integrated circuits are produced by a plurality of processes in a wafer fabrication facility. These processes, and associated fabrication tools, may include thermal oxidation, diffusion, ion implantation, rapid thermal processing (RTP), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), epitaxy formation/growth processes, etch processes, photolithography processes, and/or other fabrication processes and tools known in the art. In addition, the fabrication process includes a plurality of metrology processes that provide for monitoring and control of the integrated circuit fabrication yield, quality, and reliability.
The fabrication process generate a vast quantity of data during the production of integrated circuits. However, process and equipment engineers responsible for the integrated circuit fabrication process and equipment can only determine relationships between a parameter of the fabrication process and integrated circuit (IC) performance (e.g., such as would be measured on an IC fabricated on a semiconductor substrate or wafer) by running a variety of experiments (e.g., DOEs) or through production experiences. This accumulation of data and knowledge takes substantial resources. Furthermore, experiments may only be performed on active parameters (e.g., a gas flow rate) and not passive parameters (e.g., reflected power). Further still, it is difficult to determine the contribution of each parameter elected for an experiment (e.g., in split lot) to the IC performance.
As such, improved determination of a parameter (e.g., a process parameter) that is correlative to IC device performance is desired.